Emotions affect your leadership abilities.

Everyone has something that speaks to them and emotions are strong motivators in guiding us to these goals or life tasks. This motivation affects our behavior and personality. Strong emotions can cause you to take actions you might not normally perform, or avoid situations that you generally enjoy. Why do we experience emotions and what causes these feelings?   There are several different theories on the exact way internal and external stimuli affect emotional responses.   Today I will briefly explain the Canon-Bard theory and the James-Lange theory.

Cannon-Bard theory puts emphasis on external stimuli as causing the emotional response. This theory explains that when we react to a stimulus we experience the associated emotion at the same time.  For example, when someone sees a person they are strongly attracted to the autonomic response is aroused and simultaneously an elated emotion comes over them.  Heart rate increases and they become flush.

James-Lange theory defines emotional experience as the result of internal, physiological reaction.  The physiological responses occur first and the results are the cause of emotions. Therefore, the emotional reaction is dependent upon how you interpret those physical reactions.  Say you miss a very important deadline at work.  You begin to experience rapid heart rate and trembling.  A sinking feeling gathers in your stomach.  From these reactions you interpret that you are experiencing anxiety and fear.

Many things have been found to influence our emotional intelligence.  Things like social support, optimism, neuroticism and self-disclosure all have a relative influence on how much stress we are able to handle.  The more support, optimism, and self-disclosure we have the better we are able to cope.

There are several different types of therapy to help people become more focused on the self and can be very helpful especially when someone is seeking to change a specific proponent of the personality.  Psychoanalysis and social-cognitive processes are two approaches used in personality therapy.

Another type of therapy used by psychologists today is based on social-cognitive views of personality disorders.  Beck’s cognitive therapy takes aim at maladaptive thought processes and negative schema.  According to Beck we tend to magnify negative life events and have an all-or-nothing type attitude.  When we allow our self to think this way we bring about feelings of anxiety and depression. The anxiety is due to our dramatization of life events and can be lessened with cognitive therapy.

In order to be an effective leader, it is important to really know yourself.  Emotions are a very strong part of who we are and emotional intelligence can make or break your success in becoming an influential leader.  Understanding what triggers certain emotions is essential to this process.  What is your emotional intelligence?  To test it click here.